Who are the Hakka Chinese, and What are Chinese sub-groups anyway, Part 5 in a series on Chinese conflicts during the California Gold Rush?

Chinese ethnography and the Hakka, an interesting Chinese sub-group in China and in the USA

Greetings and thanks for coming back.

Today I continue with writing on Chinese on Chinese violence during the California Gold Rush that began in 1849 and continued into the 1850s. I am finding this a fascinating subject and am discovering things that I have not seen in print elsewhere. For a historian, this is very exciting.

Among these findings is that both of the conflicts in 1850s California involved fighting between the Cantonese Chinese and the Hakka Chinese.

Today we focus on the issue of Chinese sub-groups, how such classifications are made, and begin with who the Hakka and Cantonese people are. As I will explain later, although these are both Chinese, they are each different in many ways. (Officially, it seems, “they are all the same, only different.” It’s such a concise and accurate summary of the situation that I have included it in this article twice.)

Over the next couple weeks, we will focus more on what makes the Hakka sub-culture distinct, as well as what was happening in China between the Hakka and the Cantonese people, and how it seems to have affected events in California at the time and been part of what led to fighting between the two groups.

Also, I have generously included lots of links to other sources on the web on this subject. Please feel free to follow up on them.

In other subjects here, I am still working hard at the Advanced EMT course, and doing some EMS writing. See my latest at https://www.jems.com/mental-health-wellness/ny-state-program-works-to-reduce-mental-health-risks-including-suicide-among-ems-and-others/

Thanks for being here and thanks for reading. Please spread the word and tell your friends.

The Hakka people, a sub-group of Chinese (Han Chinese), often lived in large communal houses with thick outer walls. This is a photo of some traditional Hakka houses in Fujian province in Southeastern China. A house such as this would often be home to 80 families. This photo came from an article on these houses. For the full article, https://inhabitat.com/chinese-hakka-houses-form-self-sustaining-communities/hakka-houses-5/

Trying to answer the question “Who are the Hakka? And what were they doing in California during the Gold Rush?”

Who are the Hakka? A Chinese sub-group.

And what does that mean?

China is currently home to well over a billion people. And, all jokes aside, it is important to remember that that means more than one billion DIFFERENT people. And that’s not just a lot of people, but it also signifies a lot of variation, a lot of sub-groups, and a lot of differences of all kinds among all those people. Remember, China is not just highly populated, but also, in terms of geography, it is a very large and geographically diverse country.

On the complexities of human cultures and societies.

Many on our side of the world, ¹ do not realize this, but we are not alone in oversimplifying other cultures. Many Chinese, oversimplify our culture, too.

By way of comparison, being as humans are humans, many Chinese assume that all Americans are basically the same “type” of people, and I have had some Chinese graduate students who also hold a very simplistic view of American society and culture. ²

These people have no idea how complex and varied American society is. Even among just the White, Caucasian Americans, there is a huge amount of variety and cultural difference. We have Italian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Greek-Americans, light skinned Hispanics and Spanish-Americans, Persian-Americans, French, Dutch, and German Americans, the stereotypical White Anglo Saxon Protestants, and countless others. Each and every one of these groups has their own mannerisms, gestures, linguistic traditions, preferred occupations in many cases, variations in religious practice and belief, as well as cuisine and favorite foods. But to a native born American, White or otherwise, these are all important and visible distinctions and part of the fabric of our society. Please note, most of the groups I have mentioned are not what we would consider as minorities. They are all instead, somehow, what could be considered “sub-divisions among the majority ethnic group of our country.” At least if we consider, so-called White, Caucasian, “Euro-Americans” as a single group, which, for better or worse, many commonly do.

And what does it mean to be “American” any way? I am writing on the weekend before the very important Trump-Harris election, and although I try to avoid too much politics here ( despite supporting Harris), I think that it's important to recognize that one way to describe this election is as two groups of Americans each labeling the opposing side as “Un-American. “

And if we can't agree on what exactly defines behaving as an American, it makes sense that attempts to define “Chinese-ness” are likely to get complex at times.

The Complexities of Classifying Humans by “type.”

In the USA today, our definitions of any ethnic or minority group varies depending on context and authority cited and is a subject of much debate within both academic, social, and government circles. Exploring the complexities of group identity in our country and redefining or debating them at times seems like a national pastime.

But shifting attention back to China, in China, the current situation is very different. The Chinese Communist Party teaches that there are 56 recognized ethnicities in China today. This is a government standard and not generally open to public debate. Of these, while the majority are “Han” or what we in the West would normally refer to as “Chinese,” there are 55 recognized minorities. Some of these are familiar to most educated people in the West. For instance, there are Mongolians, and Koreans whose ancestral homelands now lie within the Chinese borders, as well as Tibetans and Uighurs, two of Chinese largest minority groups, but whose homelands were once independent nations bordering Chinese a century ago. ³ Others are much less commonly known ethnicities, and while often fascinating to learn about, are much less known in the West or outside of China. Together these groups composed less than 10% of the population of the People’s Republic of China according to the census of 2010.

As for the other 90% plus of the Chinese population, the people who most of us would casually refer to as “Chinese” in general conversation, the Chinese government designates them as the “Han,” a reference to the Han Dynasty of approximately 202 BC-225 AD, often considered one of the first Chinese dynasties to display many of the characteristics and institutions associated with Chinese culture and civilizations.  

So, why aren’t the Hakka and Cantonese considered minority groups anyway?

While the issues involved are complex, as are any issues involving race, ethnicity, nationalism, and group identity, the designation of all these different types of people together as one group with a shared sense of identity distinct from sharing many elements of a larger shared Chinese culture, is largely a modern, twentieth century or later creation. Under both the Republican ( 1911-1949) and Communist (1949 to present) governments of China, the national government has sought to encourage the Chinese, A.K.A. the “Han” people, as a unified group and self-identify as such.

While some foreign anthropologists and other researchers might question this, for instance, I have heard discussions showing commonalities between some aspects of Cantonese culture and Vietnamese culture that would not be true of most other Chinese sub-groups, the Chinese Communist party does not.

In the 1850s, the era of the California gold rush and the period we are focusing on, things were a bit different. Not only were there “merely” 430 million people estimated to be living in China at the time (merely a little over 18 times the population of the USA of the time with its 1850 people of a little more than a mere 23 milion people), but among the people now considered to be “Han,” there was much less sense of nationalism or of being part of a shared group.  

THE HAKKA, THE CANTONESE, AND OTHER GROUPS OF THE PEARL RIVER DELTA

Most educated people in the West who have some interest in China know that there are at least two broad distinctions among Chinese people. There are the Southern Chinese who are often known as the Cantonese, and there are the northern Chinese who are known for speaking a language (or dialect?) known as Mandarin. And with food, there is northern cuisine and southern or Cantonese cuisine, among other types such as “Sichuan,” etc. And with martial arts or kung fu, there are also “northern” and “southern” styles.

But of course, it’s much more complex than this. Nothing’s that simple when it involves human beings.

Last week’s offering focused on the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, A.K.A. Canton. That issue also discussed how out of the four Chinese “Companies” that existed in California, three were composed of Cantonese people from Canton and the fourth was composed of Hakka people from Hong Kong.

There were others such as the Toishan, but for now we are going to just focus on the two seen in the California “tong wars” of 1854 and 1856. These were the Cantonese and the Hakka.

THE CANTONESE PEOPLE

As stated last week, three out of the four Chinese “Companies” mentioned were composed of Cantonese people who came from, surprise, Canton. (A.K.A. Guangdong). People fron Canton speak Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese traditionally spoken among most American and Candian Chinatown residents as well as the language most widely spoken in Hong Kong and seen in most Hong Kong films in their original version (more on this later). People from Canton are known for preparing and eating (mostly) a cuisine known as “Cantonese cuisine.” Traditionally, they enjoy a style of Chinese Opera known as  . . . are you ready for this?  . . . Cantonese Opera.

Are you sensing a pattern here?

If not, to summarize, Cantonese people are known for doing Cantonese things.

Seriously, while the Cantonese are considered a subgroup of the Han ethnic group and sharing a culture with the northern Chinese, this is a relatively recent development, historically speaking. Traditionally, while considered “Chinese,” they were also seen as different in many ways from the people of the north. (Like I said, it’s complicated. To summarize, like so many things, they are all the same only different. Fair enough?)

In fact, during the mass demonstrations in Hong Kong during 2019, a major factor missed by many outsiders seeking to understand the events was a sense among many of Hong Kong’s largely Cantonese speaking residents that a distinctly different type of people from the north were increasingly dominating their city and forcing them to do things like learn and speak the northern Mandarin dialect instead of their native Cantonese.

As the Cantonese, were the most common type of Chinese encountered in the USA for well over a century, to most Americans, Cantonese foods and its Americanized variants are often what are seen as “Chinese food.” And it’s not bad stuff.

Perhaps some day I will try to write more about the Cantonese, but for the moment, I am going to assume that they are reasonably familiar to most readers of this publication and instead focus on the Hakka.

But before I do, just for fun, I am going to include a link to the Cantonese cooking playlist from Chinese Cooking Demystified, one of my favorite YouTube channels.

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title="Old School Sweet and Sour Pork, without Ketchup (山楂咕噜肉)" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

THE HAKKA PEOPLE

As for the Hakka People, they are a distinctly different group with a different language, cuisine, history, and identity.

HISTORY

While the details of Hakka history are often in dispute or difficult to research, the jist and pattern of Hakka history is relatively simple to follow.

The roots of the Hakka lie in northern China.

Although there is some uncertainty about the exact dates or cause, centuries ago, sometime between the end of the Han dynasty and the beginning of the Tang dynasty of 618-917 AD, the ancestors of the Hakka people had to leave the north and headed south, homeless, forced to wander, in search of a new homeland and places to live.  ⁴

In fact, the name “Hakka” reflects this. “Hakka” is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters "客家.” 客家, which is pronounced as “kejia” in Mandarin, means “guest people” and is a snide reference to people who show up in places where they aren’t supposed to live. At one time, it was pejorative, but these days it is a term used by the Hakka themselves to identify their own group.

As the Hakka headed south over the centuries, they often intermarried with the other peoples they met, some Han, some non-Han, and developed characteristics unique to themselves and sense of shared identity as Hakka.

As often happens to migrants and refugees, friction developed between them and the local people as they passed through or settled in their new homelands. For this reason, even after they found places to settle, it was not uncommon for them to be forced to flee these new territories, again becoming homeless and again forced to become migrants or refugees

In time not only did many settle in Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta but many continued evern further and settled overseas or on the frontier territory of Taiwan. Thus Hakka are scattered throughout South East Asia, or even the USA or Canada or elsewhere.

While doing research on the Hakka diaspora, the strangest place I found them was Jamaica and there are YouTube videos of Hakka Chinese-Jamaicans speaking with Jamaican accents and performing reggae music. As this post already has many more videos than usual, I decided not to share them. Maybe some day.

I also learned that at some points in the 19^th Century, Hakka Chinese “Companies” that were similar to those in California, were the only government in wide sections of otherwise lawless Borneo in what is now Indonesia and ruled much of the island almost like a feudal fiefdoms. (One reason undoubtedly why there is so much anti-Chinese sentiment in much of Indonesia today.)

Again, fascinating stuff open to more research and exploration and hopefully sharing here some day in the future. As stated many times before, exploring Chinese history is an endless series of stumbling across rabbit holes.

HAKKA IN HONG KONG CONNECTION

But enough of Hakka in Borneo or Jamaica. What we are interested in are the Hakka people who came to California via Hong Kong. What’s up with that? What’s the Hong Kong connection?

First, although there definitely Hakka in Hong Kong today, Hong Kong is a surprisingly multiculturally diverse city, home to a huge variety of Chinese sub-groups as well as representatives from many of the peoples of the former British Empire (lots of Indians live in Hong Kong), as well as refugees from other nations, ex-pats from around the world doing business, and Filipinos seeking jobs and opportunity. So while Hakka are present, the city is not associated with Hakka people generally speaking. To the contrary, it is now associated mostly with Cantonese people, the very same people who the Hakka were fighting in California in these two incidents at Weaverville and Chinese Camp. What’s up with that?

Well, to understand this, we need to look at two things, the history of coastal settlement in China in modern times and the history of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, space and time preclude including a full description of these here, but i hope to cover them next week. In the meantime, a quick introduction to Hakka culture and identity.

GENERAL VIDEOS ON HAKKA CULTURE AND HISTORY

I found several good videos on Hakka culure and history and am sharing my favorites below.

Below I am sharing a very interesting series of videos called “Yanyan Go Around in China.” On this YouTube Channel, a woman named YanYan, surprise, goes around China and describes what she finds on her trips. The channel contains over six hours of YanYan visiting Hakka cultural sites. I confess, I have not viewed them all. But if you were to do so, I am confident that you would learn a great deal.

NEXT WEEK, if all goes well, a general introduction to Hakka Culture.

After that patterns of Chinese coastal settlement, why were the Hakka associated with early Hong Kong, and mid-19th Century Conflicts between the Hakka and the Cantonese in Southern China.

And then, ultimately, back to California where we tie this whole thing up.

SAME BAT-CHANNEL! SAME BAT-TIME! SEE YOU THEN BOYS AND GIRLS!!!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the sources used in previous posts, these were used for the posts for this week and next week.

Wikipedia pages consulted

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Formosa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koxinga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_culture#:

Online Sources

https://asiasociety.org/northern-california/defining-hakka-identity-history-culture-and-cuisine

https://goeastmandarin.com/the-fascinating-history-and-culture-of-the-hakka-chinese/

Footnotes

1. For the sake of simplicity, I often write as if my readers are living in North America, and use that as a starting off point for comparisons. Of course, I know it’s not true in many cases, and I know that many of you are in other parts of the world. Apologies if anyone is offended.

2. In my experience, these students usually fall into two categories. Either they are students in some sort of STEM field whose highly focused minds are focused away from human things or else that sort of Chinese student who are attending college in the USA simply because they were unable to get into a college in China that satisfied their parents and never really wanted to come here anyway and are spending most of their time with like minded Chinese friends and pretty much avoiding anything American at any cost. I actually met one student from Taiwan whose parents had told him not to make any American friends while studying in the USA, as Americans would not help him if he had problems, but this is very strange.

3. The Chinese Census of 1958 recognized 39 different ethnic groups. In the Chinese census of 1964, 58 ethnic groups were recognized. One more additional ethnic group was recognized in 1965 and another in 1979 bringing the current total number of recognized ethnic groups to 56. I am going to cite Wikipedia as my source, even though I took an excellent class on Chinese ethnicities and minorities at Cornell where we discussed the complex issues involved in depth. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China .

4. The Fascinating History and Culture of the Hakka Chinese - GoEast Mandarin